CBS COLUMBIA SQUARE /Art Linkletter: Kids Say The Darndest Things

I was attending a film screening at Sunset Gower Studios (formerly Columbia) the other day and I wandered over to the old KNX Columbia Square building. KNX was a beautiful studio in it's day, it's halls were filled with the sounds of broadcasting history from Jack Benny to Edgar Bergen & Charlie Mccarthy, to Red Skelton and Bob Hope. The pilot episode of 'I Love Lucy' was filmed here, right here on the very spot of the first movie studio in Hollywood, Nestor Studios. Across the street is the Gower Gulch, an early hollywood hangout for cowboys where the term 'drugstore cowboy' was coined. Now I stand here on the very spot of the birth place of motion pictures, next to the streamlined neon of the Palladium theater in the now frighteningly dark streets of Sunset Boulevard where I stare up at the dingy, shuttered remains of what was once called the Taj Mahal of Hollywood, CBS Columbia Square. Charlie Chaplin filmed some of his first silent movies on this corner and James Dean was an usher here. And now, in 2009 as i stand here, a homeless man is pushing a shopping cart down the street screaming "VAGINA" in his native vernacular. What the fuck happened to this country?
Art Linklater broadcast his radio and television show 'G.E. House Party' from Columbia Square and had a hilarious segment called 'kids says the darndest things', my grandfather was one of his assistants on the radio program. Here is a brief clip.


Kids Say the Darndest Things - ART LINKLETTER - The funniest videos are a click away